The sun shone so brightly on the ocean that we squinted at the glare, and our squints made us seem like we were glaring; with our partially-closed eyes it seemed as if the sea was squinting back at us, which completed the whole synchronicity or as some might have called it, the squintronicity. It was way rad.
Suddenly I saw Old Rogers in a new light. He had always been there, somehow – indeed, I had known him since he was a baby with the darlingest red hair; Ginger Rogers, we used to call him. The name came from his tendency to express trepidation, that is, to approach things ‘gingerly’. And it occurred to me that I did know him as a baby; he is considerably younger than I. Then, he had not seemed so particularly lovely; all whingeing and wailing, as though he were some kind of incapable being. Now, I noticed little things about him: the playful freckles dancing round his cheeks (admittedly they might have been potato bugs); the cheery way he used one half of his divided beard to wash the plates, and the other to dry them; the careful alignment of snot stripes up and down the sides of his pantaloons; the mellifluous sound of his ‘aye, ma’am’ and ‘that it is, ma’am’ as he cheerfully agreed with everything I have ever said or thought.
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